Sharlet pretty much said the exact same thing he said on the Rachel Maddow Show on July 9. He even led with the same anecdote about a minister of the family encouraging Republican politicians to act like Hitler and wield totalitarian power.

The reason why Maher and Maddow have promoted Sharlet and his book so much is because they’re trying to define their opponents on the Right as something that can be dismissed out of hand: theocratic fascists.

This is nothing new. Sharlet is doing pretty much the same thing as “conservative”-turned-leftist Michael Lind who David Horowitz challenged 11 years ago in a FrontPage article that was reprinted in Left Illusions. In his article Horowitz describes how Lind came to reject the Right and embrace the DissentLeft because of Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order. In Lind’s explanation, at its heart the Right was little more than paranoid, conspiracy-driven, Christian authoritarians.

Horowitz called out Lind and his retort could just as well be applied to Maher, Sharlet, and Maddow’s attempt to resurrect the slur:

The characterization is so off-the-wall, so dotty, that further exploration of the author’s thoughts seems hardly necessary.